As the world turns its attention to the Olympics in Rio, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida released the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. Sean Lee Jersey . The report highlights the lack of representation of women in leadership roles and is a startling indictment of the current system. It should serve as a call to action to change the way we run our sports internationally.The results are a striking reflection of an exclusive mens club that runs international federations affiliated with the Olympics as well as their related regional zone confederations and national federations. All received grades of F in the report card. The International Olympic Committee itself received a D+.I have been writing racial and gender report cards on the NBA, NFL, WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and college sports since the late 1980s. Not one of those entities has ever received an overall combined grade of F. I consider a grade of C to be poor, and the NFL, MLB, MLS and college sports have gotten Cs for both race and gender over the years. In fact, the NFL, MLB and college sports got?C-pluses in the most recent report for gender hiring practices. But in more than 25 years, with more than 100 reports published, none ever received an overall combined grade of F. There had been only two D-pluses?... until today. That is how badly international sport fared when we evaluated the level of women in leadership roles.Although the hierarchy of international sport has been overwhelmingly conservative and elitist over the years, the Olympics have spawned some powerful moments for diversity and inclusion. Jesse Owens lit up the victory stand with his amazing athletic feats in the face of Adolf Hitlers planned 1936 showcase of Aryan superiority in Berlin. In spite of resistance from the IOC itself, the sports boycott of apartheid forced South Africa out of the Games starting in 1964 in Tokyo. The Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina held the distinction of not just the most Olympic medals won by any female athlete but the most won by any?athlete in Olympic history. Latynina held the record for 48 years, until Michael Phelps broke her record in 2012. Finally, at the Games in Mexico City in 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos shook up America on the victory stand with their stunning, silent scream about racism in the United States.Knowing the possibilities of using the power of sport to affect change, I readily agreed to undertake what became the International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles when I was approached by Val Ackerman, the first WNBA president and current commissioner of the Big East Conference. In October of last year, she started talking to me about how outrageous it was that women have such poor representation in leadership positions in international sport. The results are in the report released today.The report, researched by co-authors Erin Davison, Rodrigo Quirarte, and Caryn Grant, examined more than 8,500 leadership positions. Some of the notable findings include shockingly low numbers for women in leadership roles: ? 5.7 percent of International Federation presidents ? 12.2 percent of vice presidents ? 13.1 percent of executive committee members ? 24.4 percent of members of the IOCAlthough these numbers are better than those of the IFs, the IOC must set a higher standard for the International Federations to follow. It was good to learn that Angela Ruggiero was elected to head the IOCs Athletes Commission and became a member of the IOC Executive Board. She joined Anita DeFrantz as the second American woman on the Board.The United States Olympic Committee comes closest to showing a commitment to gender equality, with women representing 31.0 percent of governance roles. Even so, when compared to data from previous TIDES reports, that is less than the percentage of women in professional roles in the league offices of the NBA, MLB, MLS and WNBA and at the NCAA headquarters.There is a stark contrast between the participation numbers and the leadership numbers of women in the Olympic Games. As cited in the report, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were the first in history to include a woman from each country. The Olympics in Rio are predicted to have 45 percent female participation. If that holds, that would be the highest female athlete participation to date. This year, women athletes will not only outnumber male athletes on Team USA, as they did in London, but they will also set a new Olympic record as the largest number of women participating for any nation.Diversity and inclusion are moral imperatives, but they are also now viewed as business imperatives. They become a sports business imperative in some obvious ways. When we do the Racial and Gender Report Cards, the best grades for diversity in sports have consistently come from the NBA, in which senior leadership at the league office has been diverse since we began doing report cards. The worst grades for gender have consistently come from the National Football League and Major League Baseball.When the Ray Rice story began to break, the public relations nightmare for the NFL kept getting worse. Had there been women in senior leadership positions to advise the commissioner, they might have been able to chart a different course for the league to become a leader by taking a strong stand against domestic violence. The NFL could have said something like: Domestic violence is a huge problem of men in the United States. While 54 NFL players were accused of domestic violence since 2006, when Roger Goodell became Commissioner, during that period until the Ray Rice incident, 11,700,000 women were battered. It is an American problem -- not just an NFL problem. We are going to work with organizations to stop domestic violence.The NFL did appoint several senior women, who eventually helped guide the league to take such a position, but by the time this happened, so much damage had already been done.In contrast, when the Donald Sterling tape leaked late on a Friday night, Adam Silver, the relatively new NBA commissioner, had diverse senior leadership at the NBA with whom he could consult. Five days later, he took the podium and said there is no place for racism in the NBA and Sterling would be banned from the league. I consider that the single most important statement ever made by any commissioner in a league office. Diversity and inclusion helped the NBA, and a lack thereof greatly hurt the NFL.Ackerman summed it up perfectly: This marginalization is short-sighted and at odds with the ideals of inclusiveness the sports world increasingly holds dear. Across sports, there is no shortage of areas where more womens voices (and votes) would enrich dialogue, improve decision-making and ensure that sports remain in step with the times. Hopefully, sports leaders will heed Dr. Lapchicks call and shake off their lethargy, acknowledge fast-moving social currents and initiate the reforms needed to give women the clout they deserve.Anita DeFrantz, considered by many as the most influential woman in international sport, commented, Good governance demands that women and men share the responsibility of decision-making at board levels. International Sports governance is far behind the standard as evidenced by the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. Thank you for this remarkable tool so we can assess the movement of international sport to good governance!Billie Jean King, who has perhaps done more than anyone to push for equality for women in sport, noted that, The Lapchick report card on the lack of women in leadership roles in international sport is an accurate picture of where we are today and reinforces that our international and national federations need to bring more women in leadership roles and bring about transformational change in the way we manage and lead in sports.Richard E. Lapchick is the Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program in the College of Business Administration at the University of Central Florida. Lapchick also directs UCFs Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, is the author of 16 books and the annual Racial and Gender Report Card, and is the President of the National Consortium for Academics and Sport. He is as a regular commentator on issues of diversity in sport for ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichardLapchick. Bill Bates Womens Jersey . Argentina winger Ezequiel Lavezzi and France midfielder Blaise Matuidi scored, with star striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic setting up both despite having a poor game by his high standards. Forward Eduardo gave Ajaccio the lead in the sixth minute after being set up by right winger Benjamin Andre, and the Corsican side looked comfortable in the first half, with the lively Johan Cavalli causing problems with his probing runs from midfield. Darren Woodson Jersey . He just needed to be his best twisting, turning acrobatic self. "I didnt need to be anybody else, I just needed to be myself and be aggressive," said Burks, who scored a career-high 34 points to spark the Utah Jazz to a 118-103 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night.http://www.thecowboysfansmall.com/c-20-cowboys-jason-witten-jersey.aspx . You can watch the game live on TSN at 7:30pm et/4:30pm pt. The Flyers had won seven of eight before dropping their last two outings on consecutive days over the weekend. Philadelphia was handed a 6-3 loss by the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday afternoon before dropping a 4-1 decision to the Rangers the following night in New York City. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Three weeks ago, organizers and event fans were worried that the 2016 Paralympics would not be well-attended. But when Sao Paulo resident Marco Fumis arrived at a lively Olympic Park on Saturday, he was blown away with what he saw.Im positively surprised by this, said Fumis. We are really emotional people, and I think we realized how important it is for not only the Olympics but the Paralympics. A lot of us are here to better understand how these athletes do what they do, so were here to support.The fan support is significant. The 170,000 tickets sold for events at Olympic Park on Saturday, surpassed the one-day total for some days at recent Olympics.It was a really, really cool environment because usually we have like five people in the stands and now we have an entire gym, U.S womens sitting volleyball player Heather Erickson said after her team swept Iran 3-0.On Sunday, 46,000 tickets were sold at Olympic Stadium, the track and field venue separate from Olympic Park, according to the International Paralympic Committee.Everybody wanted to talk about `What about London? IPC spokesman Craig Spence said, referring to the 2012 London Paralympics, for which a record 2.7 million tickets were sold. But (Saturday) surpassed it for me.A last-minute campaign that originated in Great Britain, called (hash)FillTheSeats and supported by donors such as Coldplay, Prince Harry and U.S. Paralympian Tatyana McFadden, boosted sales for tickets given to Brazilian children.Brazilians can buy tickets for as low as 10 reais (about $3) and pay for them on a four-month plan (2.5 reais per month), Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said.We have a lot of things that are hard for us, the sports brings us feelings of hope, said Sofia Borges, a Rio 2016 volunteer and Sao Paulo native. It brings hope to families and kids, and its also nice to see other sports than soccer.Total ticket sales now sit at 1,863,000, the second-highest Paralympic Games total ever, behind London. Spence admitted that the expectations were low but he said hes overjoyed at how well the games have come together.Weve got full venues, the athletes are loving it and the performance levels are what we expected, Spence said. We said coming in this would be the best Paralympic Games in terms of athletic performance and theyre clearly proving so.Indeed, coming into Sunday, 89 world records had been broken. Jay Novacek Womens Jersey. While Brazilians cheer hardest for Brazilian athletes, others have noticed the emotion that the fans have brought to the games.I think that we gain energy off of the crowd, U.S. womens sitting volleyball coach Bill Hamiter said. It doesnt matter how many people, we were just gaining energy off of them.Andrada described a scene that he felt embodied the spirit of the fans. When the Algerian womens sitting volleyball team was a no-show in its first match against the U.S. on Friday, officials invited children onto the court to play. The crowd stayed to cheer on the children.They could have gone, there werent any high-ranking athletes playing; only children, said Andrada. But 8,000 people decided to stay and cheer on the kids as they learned the sport.The IPC will continue to try raise the profile of para sports between Paralympics. Brazil will host the 2017 Parapan American Youth Games, at a new facility in Sao Paulo. Construction for the Rio 2016 museum will be underway soon, and the IPC is producing a Paralympic Rio 2016 film.As for current media, 154 countries are broadcasting the games worldwide, a 39-country upgrade from 2012, according to the IPC.While these are record numbers, Sao Paulo resident Cristina Fumis, who attended events at Olympic Park over the weekend, said she believes that the media exposure can be better.The announcement for the opening ceremony was not on the front page, only a small section in the back, said Fumis of how a Sao Paulo newspaper covered the Paralympics opening ceremony. I think the media is powerful in the way that it can change the mindset of the population.While Spence is excited about ticket sales greatly exceeding expectations, he knows that preparation is key for maximizing potential.Weve sold about 1.5 million tickets in the last three weeks, and thats because we did a real big push on tickets, said Spence. Had we done this push a lot earlier, I know we could have sold out these games.---Kennington Lloyd Smith III is a journalism student at the University of Georgia. Penn State and Georgia are partnering with The Associated Press to supplement coverage of the 2016 Paralympics. Cheap NFL JerseysCheap NFL Jerseys ChinaCheap Jerseys From ChinaCheap NFL Jerseys AuthenticWholesale Jerseys ChinaCheap NFL Jerseys ChinaNFL Cheap Jerseys ' ' '
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